How Focus Changed My Thinking About Emotional Intelligence

In a second-grade classroom at a school in Spanish Harlem, the teacher told me that a child had come to class very upset: Someone she knew had been shot. The teacher then asked the students how many of them knew a person who had been shot—and every hand went up.

The children’s school was right next to a massive housing project were most of these children live. On top of the difficulties of such a childhood, half of the children in this class had “special needs,” ranging from attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder to the autism spectrum. I expected the atmosphere to be chaotic. Instead the students were quiet, focused, and calm.

The secret? I watched the children have their daily session of “breathing buddies,” where they lie on the floor, each with a favorite stuffed animal on their belly, and count 1-2-3 as their breath rises and as it falls. This simple exercise strengthens the brain’s circuits for attention—and it has changed my thinking about emotional intelligence.

The prefrontal circuitry that focuses the mind has another role: It also calms the body from stress arousal. These children were training their brains to be both more concentrated and to recover more quickly from upsetting emotions (which is the operational definition of resilience).

Those two skills heighten a child’s readiness to learn. They also enhance their emotional intelligence (EI). Here’s why.

EI refers to two kinds of focus. First: an inward awareness of our thoughts and our feelings, and applying that in managing our upsets and focus on our goals. Second: a focus on others, to empathize and understand them, and on the basis of this to have effective interactions and relationships.

What I had not realized until now was how essential the basic skills of attention—focus—are in building these skills.

Linda Lantieri, head of the Inner Resilience Program, which brought the breathing exercise to the school along with a host of other emotional intelligence skill-builders tells me that when children strengthen their focusing abilities in this way, it speeds up by a year or two their acquisition of the rest of the EI skill set.

When I spoke to the teacher of these second-graders, she told me about a day when scheduling glitches made them skip the breathing exercise. The result: the kids were all over the place.

With young people growing up in a world of distractions as never before, it’s time to teach attention skills, the fundamental ability in readiness to learn.

If that many children in the Spanish Harlem class knew someone who'd been shot, and half the class had special needs from ADHD to autism, I believe some of those actually have childhood PTS injuries to their neurology. (Symptoms of PTSD mimic those of ADHD and other disorders.)

Dr. Judith Herman (Harvard) in her Trauma and Recovery says PTS injuries should be the first go-to diagnosis. If treatment for the stress injuries doesn't work, then go down the flow chart to other disorders.

Getting to the real root of a child's neurological "deficits," can help that child know it's not that there's something wrong with him or her, it's that there's something wrong that happened to them....something wrong they were subjected to.

And getting closer to the root causes enables more timely solutions, in the critical windows of time, during a child's development.

Hi I really subscribe to this viewpoint. My son with Downs Syndrome does breathing exercises daily and this helps him a) breathe properly and b) focus his mind.
He is also very high functioning and very smart (not usually a word ascribed to those with special needs but I see it all the time).
I spent his early years teaching him to focus and he now has a focused attention span of up to 20 mins which is as good as any "normal" adult I know.
Great article.
Thanks
Rachel

Just like the adults,focus is also important in developing the mind of a child.Proper guidance is very important in this stage.As a result, we will see children becoming more creative in everything they do and more interested in school.

I see this also as a coping mechanism for adults from job related stress. I tried the breathing technique here in my office during a stressful moment and I was amazed how it calmed me down. And allowed me to refocus and complete the task at hand.

As a Behavior Specialist and Special Educator one of the "Insider Tips" that I try to facilitate in all clients/students is the development of self-awareness. When individuals can connect with the times they are not on task as to when they should be the process of self-monitoring begins. Indeed, breathing and the ability to function in a calm state increases one's ability to focus. Furthermore, the skill of self-monitoring and breathing allows for a higher frequency and duration of time on task.

cognitive control is affected by the some physiological and psychological conditions.It is important to categorize individuals suffering from attention deficit disorder in relation to the underlying causes such as depression,anxiety etc.Furthermore the remedial exercises and measures to overcome this disorder with varying causes maybe different from each other.